Environment | Daily Report

In January, California Watch’s Bay Area news operation moved into offices on Berkeley’s Center Street.

Our block runs from the downtown BART station to the west entrance of the University of California campus.

flickr photoStrawberry Creek

The street is bustling and vibrant, with plenty of foot, bicycle and vehicular traffic. It has a pleasant big-city feel.

Naturally, a green developer wants to turn it into a creek.

The idea has apparently been kicking around for years.

Its current incarnation is the work of Ecocity Builders, which has spent $150,000 in donated money on the plan, the Berkeley Voice reports.

The idea got a boost last week when the city council gave the developer the okay to solicit $15 million in grants to pay for construction.

The plan is to excavate Center Street and bulldoze a stream bed. Strawberry Creek, the lovely stream that bisects the Cal campus, would be routed into the channel. At the bottom of the block, the creek would be diverted back into a underground pipe. (Today, Strawberry Creek goes underground as it leaves campus.)

There would be trees, wetland plants, a plaza and “public art.” A lot of thought has gone into the design.

The hope is to “reinvigorate the commerce and culture of downtown Berkeley and reflect the city’s natural landscape in its infrastructure,” the East Bay Express’s “Eco Watch” column says.

As Walter Hood, the developer’s landscape architect, told the paper: “We had to ask ourselves, ‘How do we make Strawberry Creek revelatory  to the downtown and let people know they are in a riparian corridor?’”

How, indeed?

I love Strawberry Creek. After work, I walk home alongside it – it’s great to hear the creek booming after a rain.

But I like cities, too, and investigative journalism is a gritty job. Can you chase the big story creekside, and with no auto access?

Anyway, the guy who runs the Quiznos sandwich shop likes the idea – making Center Street into a creek might bring in more lunch customers, he reasons. The owner of the Tibetan souvenir shop is behind it, too, the Voice reported.